The highly rational and abstract discourse of Habermas associated with democratic will-formation along with the rules for engaging in such discourses have influenced transformative learning theory. Communicative action and critical reflection are demanding activities. The conditions for engaging in discourse require adult learning apabilities such as the development of the capacity to be critically reflective as well as the ability to engage in “[… ] critical dialectical discourse involving the assessment of assumptions and expectations supporting beliefs, values and feelings” (Mezirow, 2003, p. 60). These difficulties, at least in part, led to other understandings of transformative learning such as Boyd & Meyers (1988), according to Taylor (1998). From the beginning Mezirow (1981) has closely allied ransformative learning with the project of critical theory and democratic will-formation as outlined by Habermas. Jefferson, Marx, Gramsci, Dewey and Maxine Greene all note that democratic participation is an important means of self-development and produces individuals who are more tolerant of difference, sensitive to reciprocity, better able to engage in moral discourse and be more self-reflective (Mezirow, 2003, p. 60). Dewey understood that democracy “[… ] necessarily emerges on the condition of an antecedent intersubjectivity of social life” (Honneth, 1998, p. 767).